flowers
by not a straight trumpet
Summary: Kumiko couldn't take her mind off of the flowers at the front of the school, not after what Taki had told her.


**a/n:** so i live in america and unless you're one of the lucky people who live under a rock, you know what happened in america. bad things happened in america and i'm utterly terrified but i'm going to keep on doing what i do best and write stories to maybe cheer people up, volunteer at organizations, etc etc. i'm scared but i'm not letting an evil cheeto take away anything more than he already has.

aNYWAY here's a fic about kumiko and reina being dorks and talking about band stuff

* * *

Kumiko thought about the flowers all throughout practice, of the fond way with which Taki talked about his wife. Reina still seemed rattled by her . . . less than fortunate interaction with the teacher during the festival, and so Kumiko was tactful enough not to mention him whenever the other girl was around. There had been such gentleness in Taki's voice, such care, and Kumiko wondered if anyone would talk about her in that way. She knew that there was someone she'd talk about like that, voice full of adoration and love, but the thought of Reina ever being gone, Reina ever just being a sad, sad memory, scared her more than she could say.

 _"It means 'I'll always be thinking of you,'"_ Midori had said, her voice as sweet and wise as it had always been. There was a hint of wistfulness to it, but she hadn't seemed particularly sad about anything in particular, and she had returned to her usual self by the time she had taken George from its case and began playing. Kumiko, on the other hand, couldn't keep the flowers and Taki from her thoughts, no matter how hard she tried. She was still thinking about them, of that unconditional love he must've felt, when practice was dismissed for the day and Reina fell into stride beside her, eyes glued to the gray, rain-soaked pavement.

"The Nationals are coming up soon," she said, hands stiff at her sides. She didn't look up, but Kumiko heard the way her voice hitched at the word _Nationals,_ disbelief still on everyone's minds.

"Yeah." Kumiko looked to the sky, where blue just barely poked through the huge, wispy clouds. The rain had long since let up, but she still felt damp and cold nonetheless. _Serves you right, for going out into the freezing rain in a t-shirt and shorts,_ she chastised herself. _Idiot._

"Who's an idiot, now?" Kumiko clapped her hands over her mouth.

"C-crap, did I say that out loud?" Reina still kept her gaze fixed on the ground, but Kumiko saw the faintest hint of a smile trace her lips, like a split-second frame from a movie, a vignette that wasn't meant to be seen.

"It's still amazing that we've made it this far." Kumiko nodded in agreement, her sudden exclamation forgotten for the moment. "I wasn't expecting this, you know."

"What was it that you weren't expecting?" Reina looked up for the first time in the conversation, spreading her arms out, gesturing to the whole school.

"I didn't join with the expectation that we'd make it to the Nationals." Kumiko turned to face her, wondering what she was supposed to say. "I believed in Taki-sensei, obviously - I wouldn't have come here just for him if I didn't think of him as anything less than the best teacher Kyoto's ever seen - but I knew, rationally, that I'd do better at somewhere like Rikka." Reina tightened her grip on the trumpet case at her side. "People wondered, obviously, but I wasn't about to tell them why I went." The sun had started to go down, just barely darkening the sky above, but Kumiko could still see Reina clearly.

"W-well, yeah." A nearby bush rustled particularly loudly, and Kumiko flinched. "It's, uh, not really their business, is it?"

"It's not, but I still understood their concerns." Reina swung the case back and forth. "Kitauji wasn't known for _anything,_ really. I knew that I would be a big fish in a small pond and that we hardly had a chance, but . . ."

"Yeah?"

"There was something alluring about that, I suppose. It's not an easy path to follow, becoming special, but at least I wouldn't be suffocated by countless people who were better than me, prodigies in their own right. I wouldn't be as disappointed if we lost again." She stopped, as if waiting for Kumiko to inevitably relive the middle school concert that still haunted them both. "Now, though? We've gotten further than anyone would have thought."

"Right." Kumiko still felt chilled to the bone from the previous night's rain, and in a moment of feeling like a very cranky old woman she thought that her back hurt like _hell,_ but the teacher's kindness hadn't gone forgotten. "I still don't get why you _love_ Taki-sensei - like, at all, seriously - but he's a pretty great teacher. He's doing it for a noble cause and-"

"What?"

"Crap," Kumiko whispered to herself, for the second time that hour. "N-nothing! It's nothing, really!" Reina raised an eyebrow.

"If you insist." Kumiko breathed a sigh of relief.

 _I can't tell her. I just_ can't, _it'd destroy her._ They were approaching the side of campus where the flowerpot had sat earlier that day, and Kumiko hoped with a strange urgency that the flowers were still intact, that an idiot kid goaded on by his friends hadn't uprooted the whole vase or they hadn't been stolen by birds.

"You're in an awful hurry to get home," Reina said, her tone light. "Did you forget to study for that quiz again?" Kumiko elbowed her as she let out a snort. "Just because the teacher pushed it back a few days, you can't expect anyone to become lazy."

"Hey, it's not like I was doing much else yesterday! We don't _all_ have nice, light instruments we can carry home whenever we want." Kumiko made an exaggerated gesture towards the trumpet case. "Trumpets are what, two pounds? My dog could lift it."

"You don't have a dog."

"Exactly."

"In any case, what's the-"

"They're still here."

"The flowers?"

"Y-yeah." Kumiko ran her hand along the end of the flowerpot. "I was worried that they'd been blown away by the wind or something - the typhoon was just yesterday, y'know?"

"This one wasn't so lucky, though." Reina picked up one flower from the ground, laying crumpled and looking admittedly somewhat sad. Kumiko took it into her hands, cradling it gently. "What was it that Kawashima-san said about them again? Something about remembering?"

"'I'll always remember you.'"

"Right, that was it." Kumiko looked to the girl in front of her, the way that the sun seemed to almost cast her in a glow, the way she seemed so much more radiant than everything else, the way she had played during the Kansai competition.

"Hey, Reina?"

"Yes?"

"Could you, uh, h-hold still for a second?" Reina shrugged.

"I . . . guess?" Gently, carefully, searching the other girl's expression for any discomfort, Kumiko tucked the flower behind Reina's ear so that it caught the setting sun just right, a stark white against her dark hair. "Hmm?"

"It's, uh, a g-gift." Kumiko was the one looking at the ground, now, her face turning the color of a cartoon tulip. Reina gingerly touched the flower and smiled.

"You're awfully sentimental when you want to be, do you know that?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who followed Taki-sensei wherever he went!"

"Oh, are we comparing grand gestures, now?" Reina walked on ahead, her smile beginning to spread. Kumiko flashed a grin.

"I _suppose_ you could say that." She caught up with Reina fairly quickly, and soon the two were walking in stride, hand in hand while the flowers rustled behind them.


End file.
